Previews

Dinosaur King

Spiffy:

Lots of dinosaurs to discover and collect; trade and battle dinos over Wi-Fi.

Iffy:

The Rock-Paper-Scissors combat system may be too simplistic.

Kids love dinosaurs, right? You know what else they love? Pokemon. You know what happens when you mix the two? Dinosaur King, that's what happens. The Dinosaur King series began a couple of years ago as a Japanese arcade game that focused on one-on-one battles. Players collect trading cards that contain different types of dinosaurs and moves. Bar codes on the card are then scanned into the arcade machine to determine your combatant and abilities. The actual battles themselves play out like a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. The game was so popular in Japan that it spawned an anime series that is currently airing in the U.S. on Fox Kids.

DK follows the adventures of Max and Rex, who are best friends and both sons of paleontologists. The pair is part of the D-Team, a small group that travels the world to search for fossils and use their DinoShot technology that brings dinosaurs back to life. Attempting to stop the D-Team is Dr. Z and his nefarious Alpha Gang. They want to use the DinoShot to create an army of dinosaurs in order to take over the world.

This RPG follows that same basic storyline, as you lead Max and Rex across five different continents to track down hidden fossils. There are nearly 100 different dinosaurs to collect within the game, and your digging skills determine which ones you get. Once you find the fossils with your radar, you must chip away at the surrounding rock with the DS' stylus in order to uncover the bones. As you chisel away, dust forms on top of the stone that you must clear off by blowing into the DS' microphone. The more accurate you are in freeing the bones, the rarer the dinosaur you'll uncover.

You're able to carry up to three dinosaurs within your party at a time, but you can swap them out when you want to take advantage of their individual skills. Like the arcade version of the game, the fights are essentially a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Granted, the Pokemon titles follow the same basic structure, but there are 17 different "types" of Pokemon moves, which really deepens the gameplay. Here, there are just the three types, which are even represented by Rock-Paper-Scissors symbols.

To add a bit of strategy to the battles, the dinosaurs can each have an element type associated with them. They can gain boosts by fighting in a terrain that matches their type. For example, a grass-type dinosaur will become stronger when the battle takes place on a grassy field.

Like most of these "collect them all" games, there are multiplayer aspects that add some replay value. You will be able to trade dinosaurs and battle opponents over Wi-Fi. As an added bonus, a "Dino Encyclopedia" provides a thorough reference guide to the many different types of dinosaurs. Here, you can learn all sorts of vital stats about the terrible lizards along with the area of the world where they were found and a size chart that shows how big they were compared to an average kid.

Dinosaur King may be a kid's game, but Sega promises that the main quest will last a respectable 20 hours. There's also no denying that the prospect of having a bunch of dinosaurs duking it out is pretty darn cool. This might be a game that you'll want to get for one of the younger gamers in your household when it's released.